Party Decorating With Obstacles

When my sister-in-law decided that we would host my sister’s bridal shower and that I was in charge of decorations, I felt (1) giddily creative and (2) that our newest family member really knew me. All will be well, I thought.

Inspired by something I saw on Pinterest, I decided to start decorating plain glass vases as poufy brides. How hard can it be to glue tulle to glass, right?

It took weeks to assemble the supplies, mainly because I wanted something sparkly to use as a “bodice.” After finding nothing at the local sewing stores, I happened upon a gauzy scarf at the dollar store. Score! Or so I thought.

I hot-glued tulle tightly to the glass. But the glue was gloppy and throughout the process, the goal became: cover the glop.

Abandoning the hot glue gun, I tried some all-purpose adhesive that smelled bad and didn’t do the job. I have some bad luck with adhesives. Took a break from the stink to buy some good old Krazy Glue.

I cut two pieces of tulle about 42 inches long and loosely stitched them together so they can be shirred, then sewed that around the vase. Thin tulle is difficult to work with because it’s gauzy, staticky and damn near invisible. I wound up sewing on the floor in front of a window so I could better see what I was doing.

I glued the shirred fabric in place, then cut the sparkly scarf to fit around the top to resemble the top of a wedding dress. I cut about twice as much as needed so I could hem it for a clean finish. The scarf was as tough to handle as the tulle. I tried using binder clips as clamps to hold the two layers together but, unfortunately, the glue works on binder clips as well. Sewed and glued the shirred tulle to the top of the vase. In hindsight, I would recommend a more solid fabric, like cotton.

The finishing touch: ribbon. The large vase has a nice indent that resembles a waist, a natural place to wrap satiny ribbon. The straight vase didn’t have that so I sewed a bow to the spot where I joined the two ends of the “bodice” fabric. It looked a little messy and needed to be covered up anyway.

Since we’re hoping that this will be a backyard party, I envision ribbon and tulle wafting in a gentle breeze. That’s a tall order; the potential obstacles include wind, rain and tipsy guests. For all this work, these will never be fit to use again. So here is what they look like with fake flowers:

I might make a third one; I have all the supplies. All I need is a rainy day with no other goals and no need to venture outside.

Probably not going to happen as I have more decorative ideas to torture myself  amuse myself with.